Sweden opened polling stations at 8 a.m. Sunday in a general election so close that final surveys placed the country’s two political blocs within roughly two percentage points of each other, a race that will decide not only who becomes prime minister but whether the far-right Sweden Democrats join a governing cabinet for the first time in the party’s history.
More than eight million Swedes are eligible to vote for all 349 seats in the Riksdag, alongside regional and municipal councils, in a country where turnout has regularly exceeded 80% in recent elections. About half of voters cast ballots in advance, with early voting open since August 26. Polling stations close at 8 p.m., when exit polls are expected, though officials have cautioned that Sweden’s proportional system and a 4% vote threshold for smaller parties could leave the precise seat count for the Liberals, Christian Democrats or Greens undecided for hours, and coalition talks could stretch well beyond election night regardless of Sunday’s outcome.
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Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is seeking a second term atop a three-party coalition of his Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, a government that has depended since 2022 on outside parliamentary support from the Sweden Democrats without including the party in the cabinet itself. Kristersson announced in April that he would break with that arrangement if the right-wing bloc wins Sunday, bringing the Sweden Democrats into government for the first time while remaining prime minister himself even if Jimmie Åkesson’s party outpolls his own. The Sweden Democrats, a party founded with neo-Nazi roots that has since sought to present a more mainstream image, took 20.5% of the vote in 2022, making it the largest party on the political right.
Magdalena Andersson, who in 2021 became Sweden’s first female prime minister, is seeking to lead the Social Democrats back into government atop a four-party left bloc that has held a polling advantage for much of the past year and a half, a lead that has narrowed considerably in the campaign’s final weeks. It is now up to the Swedish people to decide which direction our country should take, Andersson told reporters after voting Sunday morning with her husband in Nacka, south of Stockholm, framing the choice as between a government entirely dominated by the Sweden Democrats and one led by me, which will steer Sweden in a new spirit of cooperation. Her platform centers on expanding welfare spending and shielding households from the rising cost of living, and she has also shifted her party toward a tougher line on migration in recent years, a move that has drawn comparisons to Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s similar repositioning within Europe’s social democratic movement.
Crime has emerged as the single most dominant issue cutting across Sweden’s traditional left-right divide. Government parties have pointed to a decline in shootings under their watch, while the opposition has highlighted a rise in bombings and the continued recruitment of children into criminal networks, which they link to cuts in preventive social spending. Kristersson has campaigned on continuing that law-and-order approach alongside stricter migration policy, telling AFP before the vote that his government wants to use far better preconditions to improve the lives of ordinary people.
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The election has also reopened debate over Sweden’s Israel-Palestine policy, an issue with roots stretching back to the 1948 assassination in Jerusalem of Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte, the United Nations’ first mediator for Palestine. The current government does not characterize Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide and has not joined South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice; it suspended and later resumed funding to the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA after Israel alleged some staff took part in the October 7, 2023, attacks. Sweden’s government instead redirected roughly $83 million toward humanitarian response in Gaza for 2026 outside UNRWA channels. Left Party and Green Party figures have called for Sweden to join the ICJ genocide case and boost funding to the International Criminal Court, which has an outstanding arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while the Sweden Democrats have separately pushed for Sweden to withdraw its 2014 recognition of a Palestinian state.
Should neither bloc secure a clear parliamentary majority, Sweden’s fragmented multiparty system points toward the kind of prolonged post-election negotiations that have followed several recent Swedish elections, potentially delaying formation of a new government for weeks after Sunday’s vote. First reliable results are expected several hours after polls close.
